So many people just don't seem to comprehend what this role means and why it is there in the first place. A medic is one of the most important roles in PR to prevent people form having to spawn miles away at the main base.

As a medic, your role is to SUPPORT the squad (THIS IS NOT THE 'PWNED LIFE' )

-KEEP YOUR SQUAD LEADER ALIVE. This is of paramount importance, especially with 0.7. Without your squad leader, rally points will not be set; bunkers/firebases will not be built, and your squad will resort to vBF2 tactics-resulting in an even greater mess. Need I say more?

-YOUR PRIMARY DUTY IS TO YOUR SQUAD. Medics are supposed to stick with their squads, and a dead team-mate from another squad will be revived by the medic from that particular squad. You are not doing anyone a favour by letting loose with your shock paddles (which have a reload time). If you see a lone player requiring medical attention, DO NOT GIVE IT TO HIM! Hit the 'page down' button for a 'No can do'. Anything can happen when you are healing that player. Keep your squad mates alive, and you will reap the benefits. Always try and stay close to your squad leader (who shouldn't be charging into battle, but taking the rear).

-USE COMMON SENSE. Honestly, there is nothing heroic by going in the line of fire and getting yourself killed. Should a squad mate die, and you feel that you will need to expose yourself to danger-just forget about it. Also, while healing squad mates, keep your head down, by either crouching or lying prone behing some sort of a barrier. There is nothing more tempting for an enemy than an unaramed medic healing another player. Don't be afraid to move to a safer position if the squad mate is badly wounded-your squad should wait up for you. Assess the situation, and keep your eyes (and ears) open.

-STAY ALIVE. This should be common sense by now...

-YOUR LAST GOAL IS TO PROVIDE COVERING FIRE. Most of the time, you should be with your squad, asking if they need healing/medical attention. If everything is fine- then and only then must you provide fire. For those of you who are 'Score Challenged'- you will earn many more points for healing/reviving a team mate than for shooting someone.

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Obviously, all of the above is dependent upon having a well functioning squad, that provides cover fire when a medic is doing what he does best.

That's all for now - feel free to add anything else that you might feel is important.

EDIT 1: [As suggested by Headshot]

Smoke is also one of the most useful things you have in your inventory, use it whenever you have a dangerous revive.

Fast reviving is also a very important skill. You should be able to fully sprint , dolphin dive and rez a guy from any angle, press crouch to get up fast and continue sprinting. Both of you should get away

When reviving on a hill, depending on the hill gradient, you have to rez up the hill from his bodies position. Usually one or two body widths but in extreme cases it can get pretty far, it's pretty useful to know how to do this.

Remember you can heal yourself, this is one of the most useful things about the medic class in terms or self-preservation. Keep your field dressings for when your revive-ee is glitched into a building or terrain. I just use all 3 and try again. They work a lot of the time.

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EDIT 2: [As suggested by Grand_Maneuver]

Exposing yourself to danger is rarely goodsince you're the medic as you pointed out, but nothing wrong with using em smoke nades of yours, cover the friendly who lay there coughing, revive him when smoke is fully covering you and your mate and then TELL(order) him to run for cover.

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EDIT 3: [As suggested by mammikoura]

1. Right after reviving someone RUN to cover. Don't think about the other guy. It's his job to follow you. You should also already know where you are going to run after you revive the guy, always stick to the plan.

2. Think. Do you need smoke? How many enemies are there? Where is the closest cover? Is that cover safe enough? Are you sure you have enough sprint left to run to the wounded and back to cover? You have 30 seconds, use it.

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EDIT 4: [As suggested by daranz]

Another thing, leftover from 'nilla, is the health indicators on the map and in the 3D overlay. In case you didn't already know, injured players' icons are highlighted in different colors depending on their health. You also see health bars below player names, if they're sufficiently injured and you're close enough. In the heat of battle, people might not notice that they are bleeding a river and coughing like a smoker who goes through 3 packs a day. So, it might be a good idea to actively seek out injured people, if the situation allows it.

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EDIT 5: [As suggested by Sadist Cain]

DRESSINGS: use them carefully and properly. If you have time then just heal with the medic bag but if you're locked in a firefight and youre reviving the support gunner, then you have to get his health up as fast as possible.

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EDIT 6: [As suggested by Dr2b Rudd and .:iGi:. Eggenberg4Ever]

COMMUNICATION: "Follow me" is probably the msot useful communication a medic has. Heal, keep shouting "follow me" until the casualty is with you in cover.

The new shout of "First Aid here!"....

It means just that: first aid HERE!!! Meaning the medic's position.

If you're in the position where you're running, blurry-visioned. coughing, screaming for a medic, don't expect us to come running to you when we're:

In a safe place to administer first aid to you and others (in particular our own squad).

We're with our squad (which is where YOU should be in most cases... along with your medic. Don't have one? Get one or become one!!).

The problem is, the other guy usually won't be helped by the medic in his squad, if he has a medic in his squad at all. Which is why I assist other people whenever possible and not excessively dangerous. Going way out of your way to assist a downed blue guy might not be a good idea, but if you're in the area, and able to provide assistance, it might be better for the team in the end.

expose yourself to danger is rarely good since you're the medic as you pointed out, but nothing wrong with using em smoke nades of yours, cover the friendly who lay there coughing, revive him when smoke is fully covering you and your mate and then TELL(order) him to run for cover.

This isn't so important in 0.7. I try to find a good balance where I am in a good position to get to all members of the squad.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Atandon

Medics are supposed to stick with their squads, and a dead team-mate from another squad will be revived by the medic from that particular squad.

What if he was the squad medic and they needed him to succesfully defend a flag crucial to the team?... You have too much of an elitist attitude in this matter, imo. I try to rez and heal any blue guys I can. If nothing else they will increase my squads survival by either taking an enemy down or taking a hit that one of my squad would have. As for ammo, a good squad should have an ammo carrier anyway.

I'm gonna' go and through a few extra things into the mix...

The main aspect I'm pretty anal about when I'm a medic is dumbasses who you revive. If I revive someone where they've just been taken out and they lie there calling for a medic, even though I spammed follow me and ran to a safe location to procede healing, I am NOT going to risk my ass to go back there and heal them because they are too stupidor lazy to take cover. A couple of times I've done this and a friendly medic has decided to go heal the guy after I rezzed him and the guy that killed him last time, pops round the corner and tops them both.

Smoke is also one of the most useful things you have in your inventory, use it whenever you have a dangerous revive.

Fast reviving is also a very important skill. You should be able to fully sprint , dolphin dive and rez a guy from any angle, press crouch to get up fast and continue sprinting. Both of you should get away

When reviving on a hill, depending on the hill gradient, you have to rez up the hill from his bodies position. Usually one or two body widths but in extreme cases it can get pretty far, it's pretty useful to know how to do this.

Remember you can heal yourself, this is one of the most useful things about the medic class in terms or self-preservation. Keep your field dressings for when your revive-ee is glitched into a building or terrain. I just use all 3 and try again. They work a lot of the time.

I'm not too bothered about score, but if you do your job and help others a lot you forget to check the scoreboard and end up with a huge score. I regularly come 2nd or 3rd as medic, usually better than my SL, if I'm kept busy.

"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

well to be honest I play medic quite differently than what the OP suggest. But everyone has his own style.

First of all, obviously your squad is the priority but other blue guys are still your friends. I won't risk my life trying to save them, but if it's not an über risky situation then I'll help him. And you don't need to heal them to full health, just enough to stop the bleeding. (this of course only applies to situations where you are needed elsewhere) Though in 0.7 the healing is faster so you might aswell fully heal them, it only takes a few seconds more.

As for common sense. When I play as a medic I say screw common sense. As long as there is some hope of saving my friend I'll take the chance. Call me stupid if you want to, but often this works. Yeah, sometimes I die but that's tough luck.
As a medic my duty is to do anything, ANYTHING, to save my friends ass.

Then some other stuff that hasn't been talked about that much.
1. Right after reviving someone RUN to cover. Don't think about the other guy. It's his job to follow you. You should also already know where you are going to run after you revive the guy, always stick to the plan.

2. Think. Do you need smoke? How many enemies are there? Where is the closest cover? Is that cover safe enough? Are you sure you have enough sprint left to run to the wounded and back to cover? You have 30 seconds, use it.

It is the soldier, not the priest, who protects freedom of religion; the soldier, not the journalist, who protects freedom of speech.

Great lil thread. Grand_Manuevor = very good med I'm always glad to have him in my squad, I know he'll have my back

Don't forget as a medic you still have a rifle. Aiming shots to get precise headshots is the marksman/riflemans job. The medic should work with the support as an act of suppressing and aimed covering fire. Keeping the enemies head down might just give those few extra seconds to get the revive.

Dressings: use them carefully and properly. If you have time then just heal with the medic bag but if you're locked in a firefight and youre reviving the support gunner, then you have to get his health up as fast as possible.

As an SL I'll sometimes patch up a bleeder if I need him but I only have 3 dressings.

This reminds me of a little incident (I should draw it) that happened yesterday. Some bloke just refuses to duck and get behind cover while the entire chineese force kept shooting at him. But we medics know's what he's about to say right about 20% down on the health-o-meter. MEDIC!!! So I duck down behind cover and start doing my amazing healing skills.

Now he wasn't paying attention (mayhaps because of all the hot lead he took right in the chest) so he suddenly turned right around and started running laps around Goverment Office watch tower (while still fired upon) and kept yelling for a medic.

I would have healed him, if the whole scene wasn't so darn funny. There I was, kneeling right next to him and wiggling the holy grail of medi bags at his knees - spins around and runs laps screaming his head of. He died while the attending corpsman was choking from laughing so hard.

On topic:

Now to the point: How you play corpsman is a very personal style. Some are reckless (that some times pays off), others are to cautious (with disasterous consequenses).
Both style works. Luck of the draw sometimes.

And another thing, we medics? You have noticed that we tend to bundle up together alot? I belive it's because we know very well that there aint anybody protecting us from incomming fire! Automatic Rifleman, soddy little buggers with scopes of ALL kinds, RPGS and nades raining all over us! We huddle together hoping that perhaps one of us might protect the other and heal him.

An effectiv corpsman/medic is one who has one rifleman with scope/Automatic rifleman assigned with him at all times.

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I always keep behind at least 2 + of my squad members.. when they run togheter (succesfully working squad)
But no way you can play your medic class as supposed to be if you have 2 members running 300m away from the squad, still following orders though you cant make it to them if they die, and since you have to follow the squad leader in most cases since he is the most important member of the group, it ends up in disaster.. Better to play rifleman AT at some points.

Oh and cheers cain, always good to be with your squad, one of the finest squad leaders i know, and funniest.. since you send me on suicide missions.
If you are a medic in cains squad be advised, he tend to use you as bait!! sends you climbing up a latter to see if you get shot by enemies (Was thinking, wtf dude, i'm your medic, if you hate me just say it.) .. Nah I did understand SL's life were more important and so I gladly followered my orders to get shot.
At least i know how to spell your name Cain

Anyways if your squad is taken up defending positions you can mind as well throw 1-3 medipacks on the ground to ease your job a bit and support some fire or just lay still to wait to you get in handy.

At Mammikoura 2: Ofcourse you smoke and take the change when your SL is out there, and cover is just around the corner.
Ofcourse you have to think and rethink the situation but remember your man is dieing, decide fast!

Also those situations where you say clearly into your voip "I'll be medic!" then there sometime is a secound medic which is just fine, but later ingame you look at the squad tab and realize that you have freA**** 3 - 4 medics, so what you do? Take another kit? Be incredible rude and tell them to take another kit? (not many people who listen nowadays).

Well if you got the case above, still be medic, i've tried to say "..mmkay many medics no reason for me then, I'll take LAT kit (or something else)" 5 min later all the medics have decided to go heavy guns, machine gun, heavy AT, grenadier, you name it.. and your squad ends up with no medic at all. Pretty disorginaized (tired, dont know how to spell it )
SL's keep your squad at bay and tell them to stick with the kit they always should take.

Whenever I see that there's 3-4 medics in my squad, I just stick with the medic kit anyway, unless I'm absolutely sure that someone else will be the medic throughout. Unless you're in a really good squad, people will switch kits around, so I usually take it upon myself to remain with my medic kit so that my squad has a medic at all times. That's how I end up playing medic 99% of the time.

Either way, about people running away from medics: situational awareness is at an all-time low due to lack of the minimap. People no longer see red crosses running behind them, so they might not realize you're following them with the medic pack. Fortunately, there's now a medicpack-specific commo rose that allows you to yell "FIRST AID HERE!," which might be a good way to get the attention of the guy with the missing arm running around like a headless chicken. Of course, some people don't use english voiceovers and don't actually know what "FIRST AID HERE!" sounds like in the team-specific language... nothing much you can do about that, though. I once had to shoot at a guy's feet to let him know that I've been following him for the last 10 seconds after he requested a medic.

Another thing, leftover from 'nilla, is the health indicators on the map and in the 3D overlay. In case you didn't already know, injured players' icons are highlighted in different colors depending on their health. You also see health bars below player names, if they're sufficiently injured and you're close enough. In the heat of battle, people might not notice that they are bleeding a river and coughing like a smoker who goes through 3 packs a day. So, it might be a good idea to actively seek out injured people, if the situation allows it.